If God doesn't cause the flood....

Today, I heard Petra Tschakert, a professor in Geography at Penn State and Oxford, speak about adaptation to Climate Change in West Africa. She told a particularly powerful story that I want to share here about the challenges of adaptation.

She was leading a workshop to raise awareness about Climate Change, and realized that the people in Ghana she was working with had their own interpretation as to why the rains were coming later in the past two years. Why? Either it was their fault or it was God's will. She found herself in the ethically challenging position of fielding the question from anolder gentleman: if God doesn't cause the flood, then who does?

How to navigate different religious interpretations - and explain complex scientific information to someone who never heard of Greenhouse Gases? How to explain that no, it is not his fault or God's fault that the rains are no longer reliable? I asked her if they blamed her, as a Northerner, for damaging their environment.

She replied that they did not; mostly,instead, they were concerned with dealing with the complexity of adaptation - with survival more than justice. I asked her what she felt was her ethical responsibility as a northern white woman - she responded that, due to her long term commitment and connection to West Africa and her connection and understanding of scientific knowledge, to be a resource to help explain and provide people with whatever tools she could to adapt to the changes that they did not make.

It reminded me of the many different ways we can make a contribution, and the enormity of the task before us which effects us all.